Jobscope LLC
P.O. Box 6767
Greenville, SC 29606
phone: 1-800-443-5794
fax: 1-864-458-3160
email:
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Young Electric Sign Company (YESCO)
Jobscope® Software
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Material and Labor Cost Categories Defined
Employees and supervisors at Young Electric Sign Company (YESCO) enjoyed bonuses for saving the Salt Lake City, Utah, company close to $250,000 in labor costs.
Division manager Jeff Young said that it was through the company’s use of JOBSCOPE software that the savings were realized. JOBSCOPE is a comprehensive job costing and resource planning system designed primarily for companies that manufacture one-of-a-kind capital equipment and provide related maintenance and service. YESCO is a design, engineering and manufacturing company of electric signs and lighting.
"Because of the detail that JOBSCOPE provided us in material and labor costs," Young said, "we were able to develop a bonus system that rewarded our craftsmen and supervisors if the actual time spent on a project was less than the estimated time. This gave them an incentive to create efficiency in their tasks and provided us with a real performance measurement."
"JOBSCOPE allows us to define our material and labor cost categories very specifically," Young said. "So at the end of a job we have a very good idea of what happened when and by whom. If a person makes a mistake, they have to do the job over, their hours are over budget, and they won’t get a bonus."
Using the detail available in JOBSCOPE, YESCO pays 10% of all realized labor cost savings back to the employees responsible, Young said.
The detail also helps YESCO management make difficult decisions about layoffs during slower periods, Young said. "Because it is a good performance measurement tool, it helps us in deciding who will stay and who will go, and it holds people accountable for what they do. There’s no way we could ever do this if we didn’t have JOBSCOPE."
YESCO began using JOBSCOPE in 1995 when the software it was formerly using to track costs became obsolete. "We had a company providing our data storage but we decided to bring in our own system," Young said. "Initially, the primary appeal of JOBSCOPE was that we could modify it to mimic many of our old system reports. We had at the time about 1,000 employees and we didn’t want to make a great deal of change. By using JOBSCOPE, we were able to maintain consistency with what our employees already were familiar with plus we were able to add other important features."
JOBSCOPE allows YESCO to integrate all of its accounting systems, including payroll and accounts receivable and payable. "Under our old system, we had only a couple of data entry terminals, and if we wanted a report, we had to send out for it and wait a day for it to come back," Young said. "Now anyone can enter data from any computer and we can all get reports in real time. If I need information on the cost of some item or project or information about a timecard or clarification about a job, it’s there. I don’t have to wait for someone to generate a report for me. So for us, the greatest benefit of JOBSCOPE has been the information that is available and the ease of accessing that information."
The accounting integration can also speed up the realization of cash flow, Young said. "For example, when we have a large job that is completed, we can enter all the data, get the invoices out, and get paid more quickly. In the past, a large job might have had to wait a month before all the data was available for the proper billing."
JOBSCOPE also enables YESCO to be more responsive to its customers. The company has modified JOBSCOPE to allow users to download data into an Excel spreadsheet so that it can be sorted in any meaningful way. "For example," Young said, "we can sort our service contracts by geographical regions. We have people patrolling our jobs all the time to see if there’s a problem. By sorting geographically, a person on patrol can be sure he doesn’t miss checking on a job. Before JOBSCOPE, we only had listings by job type or in alphabetical order so it was easy to miss one."
Young also finds it very beneficial to sort the jobs based on when a service contract is set to expire. "If we know a contract is going to be up in six months, we can call on the customer, give them some extra attention, and improve our chances of getting a renewal," he said.
A new feature that YESCO began using in late February 2002 is the trigger and alert function available in some applications of JOBSCOPE. "We are in a labor intensive business and overtime is a hot issue for us," Young said. "By setting an alert, I can be notified of overtime issues. We are required to pay overtime, and if our employees elect to stay late, for whatever reason, costs can get out of control very fast. I can get daily overtime reports, which allows me to connect with certain supervisors to make sure they are managing their labor cost on a real-time basis."
As director of a division of 230 employees in a $100 million company of 1200 employees, Young and other top level managers can’t -- and don’t want to -- get involved in every cost decision. "But the tools in JOBSCOPE allow each manager and supervisor to take responsibility for their areas of concern. It goes back to the bonus system. All along the way, there is an embedded incentive for the craftsmen, the managers and the supervisors to keep costs down because they know there will be a full accounting at the end of job," he said. "Without the JOBSCOPE tools, none of that would be possible."
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